Category Archives: Tapping Points

Every December when people all over are celebrating their assorted holidays, a great number of people feel anything but festive. The so-called Holiday Blues is a temporary state of mild depression that comes before Christmas and generally abates right after New Years. Just because the feelings are short lived doesn’t mean they aren’t miserable.

The holidays are expected to be fun, joyful and full of love and presents. That is rarely the case yet the expectations remain. These unfulfilled expectations cause pain. The end of the year reminds you of all the things you didn’t accomplish. If you are alone for the holidays, the feeling is even worse because this is supposed to be a time for togetherness.
Since you can’t avoid December, dealing proactively with the holiday blues is the best way to get through the month. Doing a few simple steps will help you get through this time a little more smoothly.

Acknowledge your feelings. Admit to yourself that you feel bad for all the reasons you are mulling over in your head. Don’t fight the feelings. They aren’t wrong or right. They just are. Don’t try to rationalize them away. Just accept them without shame, excuses or justifications. Sometimes just allowing yourself to feel the emotions takes the power away from them.

Realize you could be falling for the holiday hype. We all feel pressure to be joyous and merry this time of year but people rarely feel it to the degree we’ve been led forced to expect. We see so many movies and TV shows with happy, healthy kids opening their Christmas presents while their loving parents look on smiling. You can practically smell the ham baking in the oven. As is so often the case, Hollywood and Madison Avenue is lying to you. Life isn’t really like that. If you expect it to be that way, you are setting yourself up for never ending disappointments that extend way beyond December.

If you are away from or don’t have family or friends to hang out with, the pain of loneliness can feel even worse on Christmas because we are all expected to be with our families. You may start to feel bad about choices you’ve made that led to being alone on this day. You might feel like you are missing out on something. It’s times like this where the part of the EFT setup phrase that goes, “I deeply and completely love and accept myself” really shines. This is a time to really feel yourself loving and accepting yourself.

On a more mundane but very practical level, get some exercise. A twenty minute walk a few times a week will get your blood moving and lift your spirits.

Take time to feel gratitude for all the things you do have. Instead of ruminating over what you don’t have, think about the good things in your life.

Finally, learn The Emotional Freedom Technique. It’s a gentle, fast method for relieving unwanted emotions. Read about it in my ebook, Transform Your Life With EFT from Amazon.

It is also available in other formats for other ereaders from Smashwords.

The Eyebrow point is located under the inside corner of your eyebrow right on the eye socket. Run your finger along the bone until you feel a little notch. That notch is the spot.

The side of the eye point is just along the outside corner of the eye socket. That little depression in the bone is where you tap.

The under the eye point is at the edge the bone under the center of the eye.

The Under nose point is the little depression between the nose and upper lip.

The Chin point is slightly above the middle of your chin.

The Collarbone point is actually under your collarbone. Run your finger under the collarbone until you reach a tender spot right where the sternum (breastbone) starts. That tender spot is the tapping point. Most people use their whole hand and lightly slap the general area to make the tapping routine go faster.

The Under Arm point is usually said to be located along the tendon that forms the front border of your armpit. On men the point is even with the nipple. On women, it is in the center of the bra strap. Tap with your whole hand to make it easy. I believe the correct point is actually two inches lower than that but if you tap with your whole hand, you will hit both points.

Another tapping point is about 4 inches under the nipple. It’s called the BN, beneath nipple point. It may be awkward for women to tap on it in public so that point is often not taught.

Stress is part of modern living. You always seem to have work to do, mouths to feed, bills to pay and often not enough time or money to do all the things you want and need. The constant and unrelenting demands put a lot of stress on your body and mind.
Some of the symptoms of being overly stressed are: trouble sleeping, muscle pains, digestive troubles, heart palpitations, breathing difficulties or any one of a dozen other health problems. You may also find yourself becoming impatient, angry, irritable, clumsy and accident prone.

It is unnatural and unhealthy to live in a state of constant stress. The body just can’t handle it without serious repercussions. Eventually you will try to do something to relieve the stress. But will your attempt really be a solution or create another problem.

Unhealthy ways people deal with stress include

Alcohol consumption

Illegal drugs

Internet addiction

Gambling

Sex

Shopping

Overeating

While these may serve as pleasant distractions, they do not solve the problem. They only mask it.

In some cases, you might need to seek medical help for your stress. If you’ve let your stress get to the point where it’s caused you heart damage, high blood pressure or any other serious medical problem, seeing a doctor should be the first thing you do otherwise not going to the doctor could be the last thing you will ever do. Too often doctors will simply give you a pill to relax you but these don’t solve the problem and like almost all medicines, you may have unpleasant side effects. And once you are on these kinds of drugs, getting off them can be very difficult.

On the other hand, if your stress is hasn’t created any major physical problems yet, you can avail yourself of natural treatment that won’t cost much if anything and have no harmful side effects.

Exercise is a very good way to reduce stress. Not only will you burn up your nervous energy, you will also make your body stronger and more able to handle daily stress. You don’t have to have a stressful, exhausting workout. Walking every other day for twenty minutes will do you a lot of good.

Meditation is a time-tested way to quiet your mind and your body. It isn’t difficult to do either. You don’t even need to be limber. Sitting in a chair works as well as sitting cross-legged on your floor. Meditation isn’t hard to learn. The trick is to just do nothing.

Changing your diet is another way to ease your stress. If you eat a lot of junk food and sugary treats, eating a better diet will make it easier for your body to handle stress.

Let’s not forget, one of the most important ways to deal with stress is to minimize or eliminate it if you can. Try to simplify your lifestyle and minimize your expenses. Stress is a signal that something is going wrong. Listen to it and heed what it tells you.

One of the fastest stress relief methods is the Emotional Freedom Technique. This simple method of tapping on acupressure points produces almost instant relief. For complete directions as well as more ways to use EFT, please read Transform Your Life With EFT from Amazon. It is also available in other formats for other ereaders from Smashwords.

Stress is a physical condition that can have immediate and long-term effects on your health and wellbeing. Some transient stress is OK and even healthy for you. You are under stress when you first get behind the wheel or when you are at bat at the bottom of the ninth and the winning run is on third. Life without that kind of stress would be boring. But prolonged, unrelenting stress is harmful to you. We live in a world where it’s way too common to be stuck at a job or relationship you hate, or you are never getting enough sleep or you struggle to make enough money just to survive. But even the rich and well-rested aren’t immune from stress.
Common symptoms of stress include:

Rapid heartbeat.

Headaches.

Stiff or tight muscles.

High blood pressure

Sleeping difficulties

Back and neck pain.

Difficulty breathing.

Profuse sweating and sweaty palms.

Stomach pains

Here are five tips to find relief from stress.

Turn off the TV: Sitting in front of the TV might seem like a great way to veg out but if you are watching the news, cop shows or even medical dramas, you are experiencing stress into your body. The shows wouldn’t be any fun if you didn’t have some emotional response when you watch them but that emotional response is actually stress. When you watch a stressful TV show, you r body produces, cortisol, the same hormone as you do when you go through a stressful experience yourself.

Take a walk: Exercise is one of the best ways to reduce stress hormones is by walking. A twenty minute walk a couple times a day gives you the chance to burn off stress. Exercising also strengthens your heart, lungs and immune system which strengthen your ability to handle stress in the future.

Meditate: Taking time to quiet your mind and empty of thought is one way to give your body a break from stress. It’s is easy to learn and costs nothing to do beyond a class or book that teaches you the techniques. And you can even learn how to do it on the web. The benefits of meditation are well documented and go beyond simple stress relief.

Help somebody: Like meditation, making someone else the focus of your attention takes your mind off your own stress. Volunteer somewhere. Teach inner city kids how to read. Walk dogs at your local animal shelter. Coach your son’s little league team. Find a cause and give your time to it. You can be sure some charity or organization in your city or town is looking for your help.

Have an active social life: Happy people spend more time with their friends than unhappy people. When you are happy, you won’t feel stressed. And when you get together with your friends, don’t spend the evening bitching about how much life sucks. Have fun.

Dance: Getting yourself lost in music and movement combines the benefits of walking and meditation into one activity. Dance your heart out when nobody is watching . You could also take a dance class which would combine the benefits of meditating, walking and having an active social life.

And a bonus sixth step.

Learn EFT: This simple method can significantly reduce the amount of stress in your life as well as how you react to stress-inducing situations. For complete tapping directions as well as more ways to use EFT, read my book, Transform Your Life With EFT from Amazon.

It is also available in other formats for other ereaders from Smashwords.

It seems to be a recurring theme lately, accepting beliefs at face value that aren’t true. People frequently get their lives bent out of shape believing lies. These lies come from bad observations, unusual experiences or a belief in the infallibility of some authority.

I had a client who had a very ingrained belief that it was wrong to have more than two pieces of toast with breakfast. Since the belief didn’t cause him any pain and probably saved him from gaining a couple pounds, he never really examined it. But he mentioned his belief in session one day. He didn’t even realize his belief was a problem. Nor did I.

EFT turns dysfunctional beliefs into toast.

He was telling me about his day as we tried to zero in on what to work on that session. He casually mentioned that he had a couple pieces of toast for breakfast and that the bread was so good he wished he had more. I asked him why he didn’t have more. He told me it was because you can’t have more than two pieces of toast with breakfast. He said it with the same casual certainty as if he had told me the sun rises in the east.

I didn’t question his belief outright but I asked him to tap on “Even though I can only have two pieces of toast for breakfast, I deeply and completely accept myself.“

He thought it was an odd request but he humored me and did it. The amount of anger and tears tapping brought up from that setup phrase astounded both of us.

When he was a kid, his mother was probably trying to get him to eat a balanced diet when she told him he could only eat two pieces of toast with his breakfast. But the little four year old didn’t see it that way. He mistook it for an inviolable rule. His mother had inadvertently programmed not to eat more that two pieces of toast ever at one meal.

As he suddenly realized the stupidity of that belief. We tapped on his feeling foolish for believing this. Then we had to tap on the anger he felt towards his mother for inflicting this lie on him. Then we had to tap on forgiving her for inflicting that lie on him. Then we had to tap on all the anger and sadness he felt about all the times he denied himself a third or fourth piece of toast when he really wanted one.

I never met anyone before or since who had so much emotional upset connected to toast.

This session opened up the floodgates of unexamined beliefs about himself and his abilities, most of which were lies or at the very least based on nothing substantial. As we tapped, he saw how much he was unnecessarily restricting himself for no good reason in areas beyond toast.

The takeaway lesson is to question everything you believe. And I mean everything. If you find yourself trapped in an unpleasant or restrictive situation, ask what beliefs you have that are keeping you there. You can try tapping on, ” Even though I believe I must have this unpleasant situation in my life, I deeply and completely accept myself and my situation.”

We build our lives around beliefs that have little or no bearing in reality. Then we build other beliefs around a sense of reality that has no real basis to it other than our belief in it. We get into a self-perpetuating, vicious cycle that keeps us glued to dysfunctional beliefs and corresponding dysfunctional lives until we take a moment to examine what’s really going on.

As you do more tapping, you will start to see what beliefs you have that are total nonsense. You will probably have more than a few beliefs to tap on.

Heartbreak or heartache, one of life’s most difficult problems is also one of the most difficult to treat with the Emotional Freedom Technique. Whenever a client says they are feeling heartbroken, you can almost bank on the SUDS level being at least a 9 but it’s most likely off the charts. Like being pregnant, nobody I’ve ever worked with has ever been just a little heartbroken. Losing a love is one of the hardest things for a person to experience. You can get heartache relief but it will take some work on your part.

Heartbreak is a mixture of feelings and emotions that meld into a deep, dark despair that does not go away quickly. While you are experiencing it, it feels like it will never go away ever. No two people’s reactions to heartache are the same. Every case heartbreak is difficult in its own unique way so there isn’t a standard way to go about treating it. EFT will definitely help but there aren’t likely to be many one-minute wonders when it comes to treating heartbreak.

Heartbreak encompasses, among other things, loss of love, friendship, companionship, touch, pleasure and hope. One also experiences the loss of an expected future. Heartbreak completely changes the roadmap one was using to guide their life. Actually, it totally shatters the roadmap along with the life.

It’s horrible if it’s sudden and out of the blue. It’s only slightly better when it’s been a long time coming and inevitable as in a drawn out breakup. In drawn out, inevitable break ups, the heartache is sometimes balanced by a feeling of relief because the hovering axe has finally fallen.

On the SUDS scale, tapping will not take heartache from a 10 to a 1. What is most likely to happen is that tapping on heartache will initiate a process whereby one can unravel, examine and tap out all the components of the problem. One may start with heartache being a 10 but as the feeling is tapped, the heartache changes to sadness, anger, despair, loneliness or just about any other feeling.

Whatever feeling arises needs to be treated. Don’t skip treating any feeling just because it seems trivial or doesn’t seem like the right feeling or the crucial feeling. If it comes up, it came up for a reason. Treat it then and there. What seems like an unimportant or trivial feeling may mushroom into something much deeper and more significant as you tap on it. But if you tried tapping on the deeper issue right away, you’d feel overwhelmed.

Treating heartache and heartbreak almost always requiring a lot of tapping on forgiveness issues. I had one client that spent a lot of time working on forgiveness for his friends who knew the girl he was dating was sleeping around but didn’t say anything. He also had to tap on forgiving the one friend who did tell him about his roaming girlfriend. Then he had to tap on forgiving himself for chewing out his friend for telling him such preposterous lies. Then he had to tap out feelings of regret for not believing his friend who had never lied to him before and didn’t lie to him then either. Forgiving his ex didn’t even come up until a later session.

Time is also needed when dealing with heartbreak. It’s not the time is the healer, either. What I’ve seen is that clients will be doing fine after a break up and then “their song” will come on the radio which triggers some buried feelings. The anniversary of their first date or the passing of a weekend where they were supposed to go away together may also put them in a funk that requires tapping.

In addition to tapping, you need to be patient when going through heartbreak. You will get better but it isn’t going to happen overnight. Unfortunately there is no magic pill, silver bullet or “easy” button to help you get through it.

EFT is definitely useful for finding relief from heartache and heartbreak but it’s probably not going to be an easy or quick treatment. But it will help you get better faster than doing nothing which is a much worse alternative.